In Fall 1987, Warren Montag arrived at Occidental College for a part-time position in the English department. He stepped into a full-time position when a professor died three days before the semester began, leaving a vacancy.
“They were desperate. I was there. I was willing to teach anything,” Montag said.
This semester, the Louis M. Brown Family Professor in Literature in English will retire after many decades at Occidental.
Although his initial specialty differed from what he was asked to teach, Montag said his broad academic interests allowed him to fill various teaching needs at Occidental.
“I think because I had broad interests, it helped me fit in because I could teach. I was the person they gave any class to when somebody was sick,” Montag said.
According to Montag, his intellectual framework has been significantly shaped by his engagement with French philosopher Louis Althusser and his circle. He said his background in philosophy, which focuses on French and Italian thought, led to his fluid approach to disciplinary boundaries.
“I don’t pay that much attention to the boundaries,” Montag said. “I just find philosophical stuff is always illuminating of literature, but the other way around as well.”
Students who have taken Montag’s classes emphasize his teaching style and impact. Calvin May (sophomore) noted the professor’s openness to diverse interpretations.
“He likes to think in terms of ambiguities and uncertainties, and so he’ll accept different ways of reading something,” May said.
According to Matthew Vickers* (senior), the 17th-century literature class he took with Montag in his first year was foundational. He said it was the first class in which he ever conducted a careful reading of literary text and learned how to connect them to works of political economy.
“That class was huge. It really showed Montag’s powers as an educator and a captivating lecturer and the wide application of critical reading, particularly Marxist reading, to literary texts,” Vickers said.
Associate Professor of English Ross Lerner, who joined the English department in 2015, said he had known of Montag’s work before meeting him.
“He struck me as a uniquely expansive and rigorous scholar, and his range of interests — from medieval Jewish theology to Baruch Spinoza, from Jonathan Swift to Mary Shelley, from Niccolò Machiavelli to Luis de Góngora, from Adam Smith to Louis Althusser — was and is genuinely inspiring,” Lerner said via email.
Irma M. and Jay F. Price Professor in English Leila Neti said she worked closely with Montag to reshape the English department’s curriculum for the 21st century.
“We revised the curriculum, modernized its orientation and developed a whole set of new classes. I think one of the bigger things is we added the methodology class, which really gave our majors a sense of the kind of frameworks for analyzing literature and how to apply those frameworks to reading texts, but also reading culture at large,” Neti said.
Beyond his academic contributions, Montag said he has maintained a commitment to political engagement throughout his career, though he is careful to keep his personal politics separate from his teaching.
“I don’t want to coerce students because even requiring them to read something can be coercive,” Montag said. “I try to focus on the material, and if you do it in a good way, they can take away things that could help them reach their own conclusions about politics.”
Lerner said Montag’s excellence and strong personal character have been a cornerstone of the department.
“Professor Montag is the English department’s exemplar of scholarly rigor, creativity and productivity; of ethical commitment and strategic thinking in response to political and pedagogical struggles; and of humor and wit in the face of absurdity,” Lerner said via email.
Neti said Montag left a lasting impact on the department’s culture.
“He helped shape the department in such important ways in terms of how we think about the major; the kinds of skills that we want the major to impart to our students the kinds of ideas we want to expose them to, the kinds of the ethos of the department and what our goals are, the way in which we relate to one another as colleagues and the way in which we relate to our students. I think all of those things will continue to be influential even after he leaves the college,” Neti said.
Reflecting on his tenure, Montag said there has been a reciprocal influence between him and Occidental.
“Students might say something, then I react to that — it’s like a Platonic dialogue — and out of that has come many of my ideas,” Montag said.
As retirement nears, Montag plans to dedicate his post-retirement period to Spinoza scholarship and conducting seminars internationally.
“[One book] I’ve been working on for a long time is about [Spinoza’s book], a big part of which was on how to read scripture […] phonology and all sorts of things that are very, very interesting,” Montag said. “He’s a big source of [mine], and I’m going to give a seminar I did this last summer at the University of Bologna in Italy on Spinoza.”
After 40 years of teaching, Montag concluded warmly on his time at Occidental, particularly with students.
“I think [Occidental’s] a place where you can be in opposition. People aren’t going to want to kill you forever,” Montag said. “In general, it’s been very good. I’m still close to quite a bit of many of my students in the past. I had a good time, I would say. I had conflicts with various people, but not students, and I’m happy about it. I like Oxy.”
*Matthew Vickers is a former staff writer at The Occidental.
Contact Val Nguyen at vnguyen4@oxy.edu
